Over the Break...

Christmas and the New Year were mostly spent at home (and with the weather lately, with no regrets at that), but we did get out for a couple of things.

One was Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire at the British Library. Hmm - I remember when the British Library was this thing buried behind the immediately-visible scenes at the British Museum. Then, for a while after they moved to Kings Cross, they seemed to do just little exhibitions about language and bibliography. This, though, had the look of a major museum exhibition. Actually, though, it did mainly lean on stuff from the Library's own collections - a few maps and letters and so on and a lot of gorgeous illustrated texts. The Mughals had that fondness for micro-detailed art - one assumes that a lot of anonymous artists with one-haired brushes ruined their eyesight to bring us this beauty. Just digging some of those pages out from the stacks and putting them on show certainly justified this event. Still, the curators had also borrowed a suit of mail from the Royal Armouries and some swords and plaques and sculptures from elsewhere, giving things a slightly more three-dimensional quality, and it was all presented nicely. Worth the trip.

Oh, and we also got to Kew Gardens. We'd been meaning to have a look at the place in winter for a while. One reason was the treetop walkway; we were somewhat curious to see what the view would be like with the leaves off the trees. The answer there turned out to be "not without interest, but not that much different either"; there are enough evergreens and densely-branched deciduous growth to obstruct views a bit, and there was no clear view through to much of London. On the other hand, well, the conservatories are always fascinating and of course mostly disregard the weather outside; I'm pretty sure that the Princess of Wales Conservatory had more open and on show than last time I was there, and there were some aquariums in the basement of another building that I don't recall seeing before. Oh, and there were some sculptures on exhibition, too.

So that was another good day out. And we didn't even get rained on very much.

Cue Kew

It was a while since we last visited Kew Gardens, and all else aside, we rather wanted to see the Treetop Walkway, so we decided that the end of August Bank Holiday was a good time to make the trip - the end of summer and all that. And yes, it remains a marvellous set of gardens - a place to wander all through a summer afternoon. I've put Angela's photos of the day on Flickr.

The Walkway is impressive, too - an elegant piece of engineering allowing one to take part of one's walk in the park 18 metres up, near the level of the tops of the trees. (Warning to potential visitors; the lift appears to have some kind of long-term problem. Personally, I don't find an 18 metre staircase a problem, though.) Funnily enough, this was one thing that made us consider coming back in late autumn or winter, when the leaves are down; the view it grants is currently of a lot of foliage, with just a glimpse of some buildings (including the Wembley arch). That's nice, but in a few months, it may allow some really impressive views across London. The plantings could be interesting in winter, too.

But Kew Gardens - an admirable scientific institution (currently celebrating its 250th anniversary) does feel obliged to play up the botanical education aspect. Access to the Walkway requires one to walk through an underground display centre with lots of stuff about tree biology, which is fine, but let's face it, is mostly going to be ignored by most of the visitors. It's a three-way science vs. recreation vs. commerce clash, too, when you consider the (fairly classy) gift shops clustered round the main entrances. Oh well, put it down as dynamic tension (which must be hard work).